Sophie Littlefield - Banished

“My… what?”

“Your aunt, Hailey. Come on, don’t act stupid.”

“I don’t have an aunt-”

“You know you do. And I don’t have to sit here and listen to you sayin’ whatever comes into your head like you think I’m an idiot, like you think I’ll believe whatever you feel like sayin’-”

“I-I know you’re not stupid,” I said quickly, placing a hand on her arm, trying to calm her down, but she jerked away from my touch. “I don’t mean to, you know, make you feel bad or whatever, but I really don’t have an aunt. My mom died in childbirth and I-”

“ Stop! ” She wrapped her arms tight around herself as though she was cold. “Just stop. Your mom went crazy and killed herself and you know it. Bad enough your grandmother got the taint, and now ain’t no one supposed to so much as say your name. Don’t you get it? It would be better for everyone if you had never been born, Hailey.” Her voice had gone cold and nasty. “You think you’re a Healer, but who knows what you done to me? You probably cursed me.”

“My mother didn’t kill herself,” I whispered. I could have said a dozen different things, but that was what came to my lips. “She… died. Having me.”

Milla stood and pointed a shaking finger at me, her lips twisted in rage.

“I can’t-” she started, and then she backed away from me. “If you really don’t know, ask your grandmother. She’ll make you believe it.”

“Wait, wait! Ask her what?”

“Ask your grandmother,” Milla said, and then she flung the door open and ran, and I was alone with only the mournful sounds of the cello for company.

WHEN I GOT HOME, there was a car parked in the yard.

It wasn’t the dark-windowed Lexus or Rattler Sikes’s truck. It was a beat-up brown Volvo, and I knew from experience that was a whole other kind of bad news. A car like this-well maintained even if it was old, boring but socially responsible-screamed social worker.

The Department of Social Services, Family Support Division, sent people out to check on us from time to time. In theory they were supposed to visit every month. In truth I never knew when to expect them, so I could never prepare for their visits.

I bolted across the yard, ignoring Rascal, who was sitting on the porch. I let myself in the front door and hurried to the kitchen. It was worse than I feared: Gram hadn’t bothered to do anything with Chub, and he was sitting on the floor wearing only a diaper that looked like it was about to burst, crusty bits of lunch on his cheeks. When he saw me he jumped to his feet and came running, throwing his strong little arms around my legs and pushing his face into my thigh, saying, “Hayee, Hayee,” in his happy voice.

Gram hadn’t bothered to ask the social worker if she’d like some tea or coffee. She had her cigarettes in front of her, and judging by the butts in the ashtray, she hadn’t stopped smoking since our visitor arrived.

Last time one of the social workers came, she made a big deal out of Gram’s smoking. I thought it would be a bigger issue that we still didn’t have smoke detectors, and the porch stairs were still just a nail or two away from collapsing; that Chub was still barely speaking and wouldn’t use a toilet, and Gram was still refusing to let him go to preschool.

It was time for damage control.

“Hello,” I said loudly, pulling Chub’s arms away from my legs. “I’m Hailey Tarbell.”

The woman seemed to tense at the sound of my voice. She had shiny dark brown hair that came to little below her shoulders-no one I’d seen before, but that wasn’t unusual. They came and went from this job all the time.

She pushed her chair back and stood up and turned toward me and started to speak. Then she stopped and we both just stared at each other.

The face looking back at me-it was my own.

I don’t mean her face was a mirror image of mine. But she looked like me if I was older and had money for nice clothes and makeup and a good haircut.

She had eyes like mine-more gold than brown, tilted up at the corners. Her eyebrows were high and arched like mine, though I’d bet she paid good money to get hers done in a salon.

She had my mouth, thin top lip and full bottom lip. She had the high, sharp cheekbones and the wide forehead I have.

My aunt-this had to be the aunt I never knew I had!

After staring at me for a few seconds, she did something that surprised me even more-she turned back around and smacked her hand down on the table so hard Gram’s ashtray jumped, spilling ashes and butts. It had to hurt her hand, but she curled it up into a fist. For a moment I thought she was going to hit Gram, but instead she just squeezed her fist so hard her skin turned white. I realized I had stopped breathing the same instant that she put both her hands flat on the table and leaned down until her face was inches away from Gram’s and said in a low and threatening voice:

“If you ever lie to me again, Alice, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

Then she turned back to me and all of the anger drained from her expression, leaving her looking sad and tired.

“My name’s Elizabeth Blackwell.”

Gram tipped her head back and laughed, an awful hacking laugh that showed her long yellow teeth. We both stared at Gram. Finally she ended on a skidding series of gasping coughs and wiped at her eyes with her hands.

“Now who’s lyin’,” Gram said.

The visitor blinked once, hard. Then she took a deep breath like she was trying to get her courage up to jump off the cliffs over Boone Lake.

“Okay,” she said in a voice so soft I knew it was meant just for me. “I’m not-who I said. My name’s Prairie, and I’m your aunt.”

My throat went dry. Prairie .

Clover .

“What was my mom’s name?” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

“What?”

“My mother . Your sister . What was her name?”

“Clover,” my aunt said. “Didn’t Alice ever tell you that?”

Suddenly my head felt both tight and dizzy. The words on the wall, the way they felt under my fingertips, the invisible pull they had on me… It was my mother’s name there. I wondered if she had carved the letters herself. The dizziness escalated into something more, like my whole self had lost its moorings and gone drifting away. “I’m going to get some air.”

I went out the back screen door. For some reason, when I heard her following me, I wasn’t surprised.

She stayed a couple of steps behind me while I walked toward the woods, away from the road where Rascal and I had walked together just yesterday. A short path met up with the crisscrossed web of trails through the woods that connected the farms out past the creek to Trashtown in one direction and Gypsum in the other. I went straight and in a few minutes I was at the creek. It was nearly dry-we’d had little rain or snow over the winter-and there was a flat rock half submerged in the lazy flowing water. I’d come here to sit on the rock a hundred times, thinking and tossing pebbles into the water. I went there now, dangling my feet over the edge.

“Do you mind if I sit too?” Prairie asked.

I shrugged- It’s a free country . She settled next to me and picked up a long, skinny twig that had blown into a crevice in the rock. Holding it loosely in her hand, she traced designs in the air. For a while neither of us said anything. Dozens of questions went through my mind. I kept thinking of the names carved into the wall.

“If you’re my aunt, where have you been all this time?” I blurted out. It wasn’t what I meant to say, and all of a sudden tears blurred my eyes and threatened to spill down my cheeks. I wiped my sleeve hard across my face.